Maria Adelaida Martinez C.
Working Papers:
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“How Does Immigration Affect Incumbent Students? Evidence from the Venezuelan Migration to Peru” (with Diana Martínez Heredia) [Job Market Paper]
We study the effect of the influx of Venezuelan migrants into the Peruvian school system. Using administrative data, we leverage cross-grade within-school variation to understand the impact of being exposed to a larger share of migrants on academic performance, dropout, retention, and school switching. We find that a ten percentage point increase in the share of migrants that incumbent students are exposed to decreases performance in math by 0.01 SD and language by 0.02 SD in primary school. In secondary school, the detrimental effects for math and language have a magnitude of 0.3 SD. In primary school, dropouts increase by 0.2 percentage points, and retention increases by 0.08 percentage points in secondary schools. More importantly, parents respond to the migrant inflow by transferring their children to other schools; a ten percentage point increase in the exposure to migrants increases the probability of switching by 1.5 percentage points in primary and 1.1 percentage points in secondary. We characterize the children who move and find that the students who switch are low-achieving boys in primary schools and high-achieving girls in secondary schools. These children move to schools with fewer migrants and higher quality.
Publications:
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"Do larger school grants improve educational attainment? Evidence from urban Mexico" (with Araujo, M. C., Martinez, M. A., Perez, M., Martinez, S., & Sanchez, M). Journal of Development Effectiveness, 13:4, 405-423, October 2021. [Link]
We study the effects of larger cash grants on the educational attainment of low-income middle and high school students in Mexico. Starting in 2009, school grants from the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer program increased by 27 percent for females and 30 percent for males in 263 of 551 urban localities. Using a difference-in-difference analysis of longitudinal program registries linked to national standardized tests, we find that students with larger grants experienced lower dropout rates in middle school and were more likely to graduate from high school on time. Specifically, the likelihood of graduation increased by 38.7 percent for females and 41.3 percent for males, suggesting an elastic response to the larger grants.
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Book: “Situación de las niñas y niños colombianos menores de cinco años; entre 2010 y 2013” [0 to 5-year-old children's situation in Colombia, 2010 - 2013] (with Bernal, R. and Quintero, C.). Ediciones Uniandes, 2015. [Link]
This study uses data from the Colombian Longitudinal Survey of the Universidad de Los Andes (ELCA) to present a diagnosis of boys and girls under five years of age in Colombia and its evolution between 2010 and 2013. In addition, it analyzes the factors and conditions that children face that are critical for their proper growth and development. In particular, it includes health, nutrition, socio-emotional development, and verbal development indicators. It also includes children's homes characteristics, such as parental practices, eating habits, sanitation conditions, access to essential services, and availability of early childhood care programs. The book presents an interesting look at the differences in the development and conditions faced by boys and girls in Colombia in different regions and given the socioeconomic characteristics of the households in which they are born. In this way, it provides valuable input to understand and analyze the relevance of public policies that seek to improve the situation of children between 0 and 5.